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Is Tick Season Getting Worse Every Year?

Experts say the tick population is booming, leading to more tick-borne illnesses

Meghan Holohan,

AARP

Published May 08, 2026

A close-up of a tiny dark tick crawling on a person's light blue pants next to a finger for scale.

Getty Images

Key takeaways

Tick season is longer than it has been in the past.
Climate shifts have made it easier for tick species to expand into new regions, bringing diseases that were once uncommon there.
Older adults face higher risks of severe illness from tick-borne diseases.

As the sun emerges and the days become warmer, many people head outside to garden, walk in the park, have a picnic, golf or ride their bikes. Enjoying the outdoors is a great way to spend time, but it’s more important than ever that people prepare to encounter unwanted companions in nature — ticks.

“Tick season is more severe and longer than it was in the past,” says Thomas Hart, an infectious disease microbiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Every year the number of cases of tick-borne diseases continues to climb. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that almost half a million people had Lyme disease in 2023, and that number keeps growing.

“This year, we’re already seeing about 25 percent more admissions to the emergency room for tick-borne diseases than we saw at this time last year,” Hart says. In an April 23 news release, the CDC warned that weekly emergency room visits for tick bites are at their highest for this time of year since 2017.

Why is tick season getting longer?

Though experts warn you can get bitten any time of year, ticks flourish in the spring and fall and are often less active in the summer and winter. As winters become warmer and shorter because of climate change, though, tick season has lengthened.

“They like warm and wet weather,” says Dr. Daniel M. Pastula, a professor of neurology, infectious diseases and epidemiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz and the Colorado School of Public Health. When it gets warmer, he says, “the tick ranges can expand, and we’re seeing that with certain tick species.”

This year, some parts of the United States experienced a rough winter, with heavy snowfall and subzero temperatures. While it seems like that would kill off more ticks, that’s not what happened.

“The increased snowfall [enabled] ticks to survive, insulated underneath that packed snow,” Hart says. The circumstances gave a boost to an already “exploding tick population,” he adds.

Dr. Christopher Bazzoli, an emergency medicine physician at the Cleveland Clinic, says that in Ohio, tick season was “in full swing” by April this year, when it typically ramps up in May.

As climate change persists, it’s likely that tick season will get even longer. “That’s the trend we’ve seen,” Hart says. “I would expect it to continue to get worse.”

Longer tick seasons also mean “we are seeing expansion of tick species,” Pastula says.

Take black-legged ticks, also called deer ticks, which can carry the Borrelia bacteria that cause Lyme disease. These ticks were once thought to be prevalent only in New England, but they’ve moved to other regions and can now be found in the Midwest and Great Lakes area.

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“We used to be a low-risk state,” says Bazzoli of Ohio. “Now we’re a solidly endemic state for Lyme burden.”

As ticks move into new regions, the diseases they carry can become more common there.

“It’s not like one tick population is replacing the typical tick population,” Hart says. For example, black-legged ticks will “survive in the same places” as lone star ticks, which can cause alpha-gal syndrome, he adds.

Tick-borne diseases and aging

Tick-borne illnesses occur most often in children and older people.

“That comes down to, basically, who’s outside the most,” Hart says. “If you have somebody who’s gardening and golfing and hiking and all this in their free time, they’re going to be more exposed to ticks than somebody who is doing that less.”

Hart points to an older study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that golfers who search for their balls in the rough are more likely to contract ehrlichiosis, a group of bacterial diseases transmitted by lone star and black-legged ticks.

For many older people, a tick-borne illness can come with serious complications, especially if they take medications that compromise their immunity or they have a disease such as cancer.

“Any illness or ailment can be more severe if you have other chronic medical conditions, if you’re much older or have a compromised immune system,” says Dr. Victoria Leybov, medical director of NYU Langone Virtual Urgent Care.

Pastula agrees: “You can certainly be at high risk for both a severe disease or even death,” he says. “It’s even more important for people who have immunocompromising conditions or who are older to really take prevention seriously.”

Many people are familiar with tick-borne bacterial infections such as Lyme, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. But it’s important to know that ticks also spread viruses.

Common tick-borne viruses include Powassan virus, Bourbon virus, Colorado tick fever virus and Heartland virus. There are no therapies that specifically treat these viruses, and they can be deadly for people with compromised immune systems.

“For the bacterial ones, there are certain antibiotics that can help treat it,” Pastula says. “For the viruses, we don’t have any efficient or effective antivirals. So it’s really just symptomatic care.”

Protecting yourself from ticks

There are no vaccines to prevent tick-borne illnesses, though one for Lyme disease is under study. Diagnosis and treatment can also be tricky because many people remain unaware that they experienced a tick bite, and symptoms are vague and “flu-like,” Leybov says.

“If you don’t know if you were bitten by a tick, maybe you think you have a cold or the flu,” Hart says.

That’s why experts say prevention is key to protecting against tick-borne illnesses. But many people don’t follow the recommended precautions.

“We actually did a study in 2019 about tick bite prevention, and it turns out that most people aren’t following the guidelines,” Pastula says. “They’re actually better about protecting their pets.”

People spending time outdoors can protect themselves from ticks — no matter where they live in the country — by doing the following:

Wear long sleeves and long pants, tucking pant legs into socks.
Apply a bug repellent recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency, such as ones with DEET as an active ingredient, to exposed skin.
Use permethrin on clothes and outdoor equipment.
Stay on the trail or in groomed areas where ticks are less likely to hang out.
Conduct a tick check every 12 hours after being outside.
Take a shower after being in the outdoors.
Toss clothes into the dryer to kill any ticks that may be lingering on them.
Check pets for ticks.

Conducting tick checks can help people find them earlier and receive treatment before symptoms of a tick-borne illness appear.

“If it’s within 72 hours, typically it’s a one-time dose of doxycycline [an antibiotic] to prevent Lyme disease,” Leybov says. “If it’s been more than 72 hours and you have symptoms and you’ve already noticed a rash, that’s a different story. Now we’re talking about a full treatment course.”

While it can sound scary, the experts agree that enjoying nature can still be fun with a bit of planning.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” Bazzoli says. “Spending time in the outdoors is really important for our mental health and our physical health.”

Meghan Holohan is an award-winning health journalist. Her work has appeared on Today.com and NBC News and in Salon, Mental Floss and other publications.